hedgehog thatsparked grief

“A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass.”

The poet Philip Larkin’s brief and bloody encounter with a hedgehog was immortalised in the 1979 poem The Mower.

The creature which inspired one of his last great poems is captured in a colour snap on display, as it snuffled at a saucer in Larkin’s garden in Newland Park.

Dr Osborne said: “It is believed to be the same hedgehog. Larkin started putting out food and it added to his upset when he accidentally killed it. Monica Jones described him as howling with grief.”